Listeners and imagination:

A Quaternary framework for EA listening & Acousmatic Reasoning

Abstract

With its use of everyday sounds, electroacoustic music encourages listeners to engage in listening not only to sound, but also for sound, that is, for what it references. This dissertation proposes the use of acousmatic reasoning within a quaternary framework as a way to navigate the many implied shifts between spectromorphological and semiotic listening in electroacoustic music.

The dissertation begins with an examination of the dis-embodiment and dis-placedness of recorded sound and source-place decoupling. Recognizing these issues in recorded sound and their effect on electroacoustic music listening, the dissertation introduces a quaternary framework based on Body, Place, Non-body, and Non-place. Successive chapters examine the relation between listening and imagination, sound-images, and the negation of sound-images followed by the proposal of acousmatic reasoning as the primary process at work in the quaternary framework. Further investigation is made of the two listening modes of acousmatic reasoning, the semiotic and spectromorphological listening modes, and three types of inferential abduction—overcoded, undercoded, and creative abduction—used by listeners in acousmatic reasoning to move between the two listening modes. Finally, the dissertation observes and discusses the implications of acousmatic reasoning within the proposed quaternary framework by conducting an analytical listening of The Flywheel Dream by Paul Koonce.